Customisable process modelling support and tools for design environment

Abstract

Systems engineering pursues dual goals of productivity and quality, and many organisations try to improve their design practices using methods. Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) and Process Centred Software Engineering (PCSE) technologies have produced many design environments to facilitate use of methods. Methods are often modified locally and adapting a design environment to support them is not straightforward. In this situation of unpredictable needs only customisable design environments (metaCASE environments) are powerful enough to provide support. Recently, design environments have been developing from single-user taskware towards multi-user teamware and groupware. What kind of multiuser support is required in design environments is still an open issue. To answer this question we need more empirical studies tackling the feasibility of the multi-user features. On the other hand, to be able to perform a broad evaluation of these features we still need to develop new solutions for design environments. In single-user metaCASE environments the focus has been on specifying meta-data, i.e. modelling techniques and their integration. In groupware we should also tackle ways to customise processes and agents. In this study we focus on developing customisable support for process models, which guide users in their design tasks and co-ordinate multiple users' work. This study follows a constructive research approach, and includes theory building, systems development, and observations/experimentation as research methods. As an outcome of theory building we present a multi-level model to represent various metamodelling aspects for future design environments. The developed system - a customisable process modelling environment (CPME) - provides tools for customisation of both process models and their conceptual basis (process metamodels). CPME forms an extension to the MetaEdit+ metaCASE environment, and reuses its solutions and tools in an object-oriented manner. Observations/experimentation contain eperiments with meta CASE environments, a review of process centred environments, and a test of CPME to define a process modelling language and an ISPW-6 process example.